Harry is recognised by most supporters as the complete footballer. I don’t think anyone can logically dispute this. He is in the Tottenham Hotspur team to score goals and he has proved capable of scoring with his left foot, right foot, and his head, on a remarkably consistent basis. That is indisputable, too.
But part of being a ‘complete footballer’ means he has many other attributes, too. He can defend, he can spot key passes, he can hold up the ball, he remains cool in possession, rarely panics, and he can read the game extremely well. Like all top players, he has a football brain and his thinking is often ahead of his colleagues. He has the ability to know what is happening around him before he gets the ball, much like Modric had (I’m not comparing them beyond this).
Playing a more defensive style of football, as we currently are, means that Harry is often isolated in a forward position and sometimes far less involved in the match. This often sees him dropping back to find the ball and get more involved. By dropping back he takes up the space that midfielders use and leaves a gap going forward when Spurs make a break. Not always, but it happens.
There is continual discussion among Spurs supporters about the need for a back-up striker, mainly in the event that Harry gets injured. But what would happen if Spurs did not opt for a back-up, bench warming striker, but went for a recognised target striker instead (for a name we would need to refer to Jod).
What would the team look like with a new number nine, and Harry playing as a number ten. In other words (to clarify for older supporters) a new centre forward and Harry in an inside forward position. We already have a nice choice of fast, tricky players, to occupy other attacking positions.
Personally, I doubt that such a shift in position would affect Harry’s goal scoring feats as he would continue to find himself with goals scoring opportunities. And, with more freedom to roam, I would imagine that his reading of the game and passing ability would lead to many more goals from the assists he could make.
Harry is certainly not old, but he is getting older and it could well be that he will need to drop back in two or three years as part of the natural order of things. Maybe it would be beneficial to both the team, and him, if this happens sooner rather than later. And it would allow his all-round attributes to come into play.
Once again, I am not advocating this, just throwing it out for general discussion. Gotta love football!
I suggest setting up a fantasy league table for VS.
Def add something different for the new season
How about a PL predictor game? I’ve done one for the past 2 seasons, the first was through Talksport but they ditched it last year and the game provider launched it as a standalone, maybe Vital could do a deal with them to have it on all of the Vital club sites?
DW……..I can pass you the details if you fancy approaching the powers that be at Vital about the proposition.
I Know there is a lot of what iffery here. Lol.
Not speaking for BS but as he said we are a bit midfield comfortable.
So take Winks out of the Picture. If some one came in for Lamella at 20 mil + then Aurier at 18/20 mil.
Then the Aaron’s /Wilson scenario would surely work.
What do I know I thought CCV was American. Lol.
Geof & WW. Yes I have also been a spurs fan since early 60’s so have seen the best players we had to win titles and UFA Cup / FA Cups. What i said about Pav is he scored goals for us and in one WHL game Harry Red. was speechless when pav came on as a sub and scored 2 goals.. fans don’t sing a players name if he is rubbish..hence super pav super pavlushenko 🙂 I actually met Roman Pav. In the stands / Shelf / Lower Block D after a game and he had a chat with us before rushing off to his wife. He left spurs and went to Zenit St Petersberg I think.
The various posts on this thread about Home grown / foreign… We as fans have to accept what Levy / Jose decide to do… sell winks, not sell winks buy foreign RB… whatever. What does matter is that Jose and the players are all together on the tactical formations and mental compatibility. We have a massive games schedule in September (thanks to gooners wining fa cup !) so a full squad of 25 players will allow rotation and some rest for players. The upside is by October we will have the squad match sharp and motoring on… So a season of better performance will follow. COYS
Watching our U23’s at Orient until the CL semi kicks off, boy…..it doesn’t fill me with any confidence we might be able to promote any homegrown to the first team! The defending has been awful, naive at best, 3 down at 30 minutes after conceeding all of the goals in quick succession. Just pulled 1 back on 37 minutes.
They’ve woken up at last and pulled another one back on 41 minutes.
HT – that was the whole point about the post. Jod was indeed making assumptions about some HG players leaving.
I am not making any assumptions about players leaving or staying. I am merely factually looking at what the situation is now. None of us have a crystal ball. Right now, there is no HG problem, so no issue selling Winks for that reason of the right offer comes in. Plain and simple.
Anything beyond that is personal opinion about what might happen.
As you say BS, there would be no issue selling Winks, but if we did it would be preferable to replace him with homegrown! lol
And any post suggesting that “jod is probably much closer to reality”, on any subject, is pretty much automatically classified as laughable, as far as I’m concerned…
U23’s well beaten by Orient 5-2, didn’t see anything to get me excited about our academy.
Check…..6-2, must have missed the one in the final minute.
To be perfectly honest I am at a loss on who we should sign, who we should sell, yes I/we do have opinions, without opinions VS would be dead, but I also think how many times have I/we been wrong, more than correct I think, thankfully there are peops on here who have I think stronger thoughts and opinions than myself, so keep it up please.
Now HT, earlier you wrote about Spurs winning the league…Played 38, won 38 games 1-0, now what a dream fantasy would love it, now it brings me back to “What If” lol! if your dream prediction occurred, winning the league with those figures…
Would the Fan Base be split..
Would VS be as happy as Larry, chuffed to bits, saying what a great coach/manager we have.
Or would it be we played negative, not entertaining thus not done the Spurs way, crap/poor coach/manager.
I know its not going to happen, but then again! Just some thoughts and questions lol! COYS
Jose out
Wow. Nice easy start to the season with the exception of Manpenster Utd. (We always get a bad deal there). Even with the current squad ,we should be top after 5 games.
PY
In response to your “dream” scenario would I take it. You bet.
For a season.
As I said in another thread
Who remembers, other than us, the year Leicester won the league they at that time were given the most pens ever in the Premier league. We on the other hand were top scorers, defenders, etc.
No one bar us remembers that.
All they remember is that Leicester won the league. No matter how.
So yeah I’ll take a season of 1-0 wins. Win the league.
It would give us a foundation to bring better players in, more money to spend.
Players would want to come to a team of champions.
ND…it wasn’t my dream it was HT’s, good on him, I was just elaborating and what would fans think, you agreed with me and the plus’s quite eloquently, where did I get that word from lol!. COYS
for us to really get back to be in the top4, we need to concide 20% less goals,
We needs the likes of lucas,lamela,le celso, stevie B, dele etc to step up another 20%.
My nightmare Spurs scenario is an endless and dire stream of 1-0’s to the Tottenham. As though it were some kind of tribute to George Graham’s, “Boring, Boring Arsenal”. You know his style. 9 centre halves with Ian Wright up top!
But, who says that a 1-0 win has to be boring? Jose?
Spurs winning the PL, in whichever way, would be great. But who says that we can’t do it in style? Jose?
The thing being is that unless we were to do a Liverpool, and what we see is a dire journey that we had to suffer along the way to that title win. And, it was touch and go until the final PL day; we would then have spent an entire season being bored senseless as supporters, on the long and weary road getting there. And that’s too long for me…
So, those of you who can now somehow envisage a dull, depressing and uninspiring THFC winning a PL title… Wake me up when we are about to lift the trophy… Meanwhile, I’ll put my football shaped alarm clock on snooze… I’ll put myself on snooze!
But, it ain’t happening any time soon I shouldn’t think. And anyway… I honestly don’t think that Jose’s Spurs will steadfastly refuse to ever entertain us on and off this coming season. I can see us banging in a good few goals against some teams, here and there. With the team having enthralled us as spectators… Along with a few 1-0’s of course , just for good measure.
Up the Spurs!
HT….wake up! Lol! only kidding, yes you are correct about the boring thing and thus snooze control, but to be honest if we won the Prem like that I wouldn’t give a toss, people only remember winners, no matter how its done.
As you say it ain’t happening any time soon, but I/we can only dream and hope, we will be written off by the expert pundits, so that gives us a chance to plod along nicely under the radar, lol!
We have a pretty good start to the season, cept of course away at the supreme diving school called OT. COYS
HT
Agree with your last post. 1-0 doesn’t have to be boring.
I think we were showing some signs of progression after the “break”
However I think it will be a while until we reach the lofty heights of entertainment given to us by Poch.
Maybe we need to accept that we are in a period of transition in both personnel and tactics get behind the team this year no matter what.
And unlikely as it is, if we win the PL trophy in a boring way, are we gonna give it back cos we didn’t win it our way.
Just to be clear I want us playing entertaining football too but have watched lesser (entertaining) sides grab the prize every time.
I agree poch had the players doing entertaining football. Great until they started to burn out… like sothamption did. This progressively got worse with spurs players… unhappy up to November 2019.
This high pressure entertaining football is ok for young players 21 -25 then they start to feel the exhausting physical / mental / injuries effects, with players aged 25 – 29 more so…as we witnessed from 2018 on. So we need Jose to find a balance, and it looks like he has since the restart of PL. At least Jose has a game plan for different opponents, as Ben Davies said, with poch we played the same all the time… I can remember fans on here saying poch had no plan B, C or D when opposition cancelled out his game plan. So I am looking forward to some interesting tactical shapes Jose has in store for our 2020 – 2021 season. COYS
B108 …. That’s an interesting comment. I think every Spurs fan hopes you are right.